Plea to raise SC Seats

Bombay: A division bench of the Bombay high court on April 8 heard a writ petition seeking an order restraining the Election Communication from issuing a notification for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections unless the number of scheduled caste seats in Maharashtra was increased from three to six. Madhukar Kamble and Deepak Patil filed the petition, on the ground that the number of seats had been reduced from six in 1951 to three now. In 1951, the population of SC was 12.5 percent of the population. Article 330 of the Constitution says that reservations should be in proportion to the population. Following the conversion of a large number of SCs to Buddhism in 1956 under the leadership of Dr Ambedkar, only three seats were reserved in Maharashtra for the 1967 parliamentary elections. However, in June 1989, a Presidential Order had been issued making Buddhists also part of the scheduled castes for reservation of seats. The petitioners said that the population of scheduled castes was now about 18 percent in the State. They should therefore get eight seats by proportion or in the alternate, the six seats given in 1951 should be restored (Times of India, April 16)